Some fans are going to be salty about this, then after a few months won’t care.
All over a guy that will need a year or two to fill out.
All over a guy that will need a year or two to fill out.
Ummm, there were no 'minutes out of the gate' to be had by Parker Braun at UI. He was told by everyone, not just UI, that he was looked at to provide help in year 2.
Yes, of the top 100 recruits (as ranked by 247), only 10 (10%) of them remained uncommitted after March, out of which only 2 (2%) still remain uncommitted today.
From the 90 remaining top 100 recruits, 80 of them (80% of total) committed and signed in the Fall signing period (may have committed earlier) and 10 of them committed in the Winter (before March) and signed during Spring.
As per my point, the majority of highly ranked recruits (80%) commit and sign during the Fall signing period. If you wait until Spring/Summer, you are either looking for potential 5th year recruits who can help, or lower ranked recruits and projects, or transfers. The pool of quality recruits significantly decreases. You never stop recruiting, but the Fall recruiting is indeed the cornerstone of a successful recruiting strategy if you want to elevate the program to a B1G contender.
That is just not true.
Are you serious?
I looked up fouling on the NCAA website and it's worse than I imagined. We were horrific. Fouls per game is listed over the course of 8 pages. Why 8? Because there are 351 D1 teams, and at 50 per page, all but one team fits on pages 1-7. The lone team at the bottom is listed on page 8.
It's Illinois.
22.5 per game! I don't think we've been remotely close to that in my lifetime. That's an average of putting teams in the bonus and double-bonus every game. To put it in a little more perspective, Milwaukee was 74th, and we still had 6 more PFs/game. That's giving teams a major advantage with so many extra trips to line, to say nothing of the issues that arise managing your roster as your guys get into foul trouble. On top of that, players are aware of their foul situation and it affects individual play. You can't possibly be successful with that much fouling.
Are you serious?
I looked up fouling on the NCAA website and it's worse than I imagined. We were horrific. Fouls per game is listed over the course of 8 pages. Why 8? Because there are 351 D1 teams, and at 50 per page, all but one team fits on pages 1-7. The lone team at the bottom is listed on page 8.
It's Illinois.
22.5 per game! I don't think we've been remotely close to that in my lifetime. That's an average of putting teams in the bonus and double-bonus every game. To put it in a little more perspective, Milwaukee was 74th, and we still had 6 more PFs/game. That's giving teams a major advantage with so many extra trips to line, to say nothing of the issues that arise managing your roster as your guys get into foul trouble. On top of that, players are aware of their foul situation and it affects individual play. You can't possibly be successful with that much fouling.
If we are wasting scholarships for someone like Parker Braun to provide help 2 years from now, maybe we have bigger issues than I thought.
I feel like that is pretty standard. Most freshman don't contribute a ton right out of the gate, especially big men, unless they are 5-star, future lottery picks. Even then, a lot of the time that is still based on the potential that they have for a few years down the road, not necessarily because of their immediate production.
I’m well aware we fouled ton.
He and the staff got a start on the 2018 class in March of 2017 at Illinois. We are now connecting with kids for the 2020 and 2021 classes already. We were late to the party on most of those recruits, save for the contacts that were already made by the coaches at the different schools they were at, except for Walker.
The recruiting strategy of relying on MIF doesn't hold, as we've brought in guys from around the country, although some of them also had previous Chicago ties. I don't think we are tied to MIF exclusively, or hoping we are.
For getting in late on the 2018 class and having a top 25 recruiting class, I'd say that's pretty decent. We're 5th in the Big Ten regarding recruiting classes, and that's coming off of a bottom finish in the league.
Do I want better classes? Sure, who doesn't. But I'd say it's a pretty decent class given the amount of time we had to build relationships.
This coming fall will be a better judge of how well the recruiting chops are with this group. They've had a year to build better relationships and have a better understanding on how to sell the program and the campus, etc.
Underclassmen play a huge role in college basketball. This is not 30 years ago, a lot of freshmen-sophomores have critical roles, including some of our own. Frazier was and still is an underclassman, so is Ayo, so is Jones, etc. Most of the expectations at UI right now are on underclassmen.
What is happening right now is not an elaborate recruiting strategy of developing long shot projects for their junior and senior years. We missed on many higher ranked prospects in the Fall, had empty scholarships in addition to some expected attrition, and things got worse having additional players leave. On top of that, we had our worst season in 20+ years, one of the worst seasons in modern history.
With a much smaller pool of available quality recruits in the Spring, we are taking some chances on projects in search of filling huge gaps, and in hope of some of them surprising. Call it whatever you want. but the ones that will not pan out, will likely leave, as it happened with Matic. They will not stay in the program to hold the scholarship for 3-4 years in hope that they may contribute 4-5 years into BU's tenure, simply because BU and staff will need scholarships to recruit some higher quality recruits.
This is not a steady-state situation where we have a strong 8-9 core that has made and is expected to make the tournament so we can use the 12th and 13th scholarship to develop a long shot prospect. We are still searching for answers in the main rotation of 8-9 players, with much uncertainty, and expectations (by pretty much all unbiased analysts) that we currently don't have enough.
Those programs may have hired coaches at the same time, but the perception of each and the quality of each was/is not equal - plus, each staff is going to go about it differently anyhow. But objectively:Indiana has a significantly better class than we do. Ohio State and Missouri have better "averages" on 247, we just outrank them because of volume. I like their classes better.
That's three peer programs that hired coaching staffs at the same time we did that are doing better at recruiting already.
I'll agree this coming fall is important.
I think may posters would rather not see scholarships used on projects anymore.
Indiana has a significantly better class than we do. Ohio State and Missouri have better "averages" on 247, we just outrank them because of volume. I like their classes better.
That's three peer programs that hired coaching staffs at the same time we did that are doing better at recruiting already.
I'll agree this coming fall is important.
It seems like you are trying to argue things that I didn't say. I didn't say that no freshman (or underclassmen, which I didn't mention at all) can play critical roles. Merely that many do not. I also didn't say that I'm happy that we missed out on a lot of our top targets. I would much prefer that we did.
All I said was that it is not unheard of to use a scholarship on a project big that might not contribute in 2 years. So I'm not sure offering a scholarship to Parker Braun is indicative of anything more than that we missed on a our top targets and Underwood doesn't like to have unused scholarships, and likely feels that our bigs are our biggest weakness (duh).
Those programs may have hired coaches at the same time, but the perception of each and the quality of each was/is not equal - plus, each staff is going to go about it differently anyhow. But objectively:
1) IU is IU, the red stripes are one of those schools that is always going to draw talent based on history, BANNERZ! Plus, Archie was a better known name than BU.
2) tosu had had more recent success than us. Thad was retiring, but it wasn't all performance based - his health was a factor, so they didn't have to sell a full rebuild.
3) Mizzou had the Porters already in pocket which kick started their momentum.
UI has had squat in 13 years save for a tourney appearance by Groce with 2 veteran guards in DJR and BP3. We are a dumpster fire and a long term rebuild. The bottom line is, we're not comparing apples to apples, and it's not fair to the UI staff right now to do so.
I think may posters would rather not see scholarships used on projects anymore.
Those programs may have hired coaches at the same time, but the perception of each and the quality of each was/is not equal - plus, each staff is going to go about it differently anyhow. But objectively:
1) IU is IU, the red stripes are one of those schools that is always going to draw talent based on history, BANNERZ! Plus, Archie was a better known name than BU.
2) tosu had had more recent success than us. Thad was retiring, but it wasn't all performance based - his health was a factor, so they didn't have to sell a full rebuild.
3) Mizzou had the Porters already in pocket which kick started their momentum.
UI has had squat in 13 years save for a tourney appearance by Groce with 2 veteran guards in DJR and BP3. We are a dumpster fire and a long term rebuild. The bottom line is, we're not comparing apples to apples, and it's not fair to the UI staff right now to do so.
I think may posters would rather not see scholarships used on projects anymore.
ThaKid????! That you?!
Indiana snagged Langford late, which catapulted them ahead. They do have a better class.
Averages on 24/7 is misleading. Class rankings on 24/7 have a law of diminishing returns when you have a bigger class. Take our top 2, Ayo and Tevian, and they are better than Mizzou, 2 man recruiting class. OSU and us are neck and neck if you take off our lowest recruits.
Check out the class calculator. Feliz and Giorgi don't really add anything to our class ranking.
...and RSCI doesn't even have that Ayo is committed to Illinois, which makes you wonder if they have a clue.